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Monoplacophoran

Mollusks

Monoplacophorans are a small class of deep-sea mollusks, Monoplacophora, with a simple, limpet-like single shell, long known only from fossils and presumed extinct until living specimens were dredged from the deep Pacific Ocean in 1952. Their bodies show a serially repeated arrangement of gills, muscles and other organs unlike any other living mollusk group, a feature that has made them important to scientific debate over the ancestral, possibly segmented body plan from which all mollusks descended.

Facts
Identification
Distinguishing Appearance
A paraphyletic class of molluscs with a cap-like shell, inhabiting deep sea environments 1
Scientific Name
Monoplacophora 1
Sources
1. Monoplacophora (Wikipedia)
  • Introduction
    Monoplacophora
  • Introduction, definition clause
    a paraphyletic class of molluscs with a cap-like shell
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